She smiled. “Yes, well are you come, my captain,” she murmured in Anglo.
He stopped, suddenly helpless. She advanced. Her skirts whispered. He lifted a hand. She laid fingertips moth-lightly on the wrist. It signified that she was his superior, but he never thought to dispute that. The faintest of pressures urged him to the table. She lowered her arm and stood before him. “Pour for us,” she bade.
He obeyed. The sound of it rang clear under the music. With a green glance she invited him to partake of the canapes—he knew they were superb—while she raised her goblet. “Uwach yei,” she said.
“Your service, m-my lady,” he pledged. Rims belled together. They sipped. The wine sang.
Her gaze steadied on him. He forgot the diamond radiance. “Service,” she said low. “Mean you this?”
He caught his breath before he answered: “I do. And not because I’m your employee.”
“My captain.” Her free hand reached to stroke his cheek. He would have felt a blow less keenly and shakingly.
He snatched after balance. “What is this about?” he asked in his driest voice. “What can I do?”
“You may well have guessed. It concerns the Habitat.”“Yes, I … surmised as much. You and your class have opposed it so hard.”
The Selenarchic families must feel sore pressed, he thought, when they stooped to politics—what they called monkey dealings. Granted, it was for the most part indirectly. Those who, like Lilisaire, had substantial inherited property on Earth could raise up Terran advocates and get a few into the Federation Assembly —Useless. Public opinion (in such fraction of the public as paid any attention) excitedly favored what would be the first real pioneering their species had mounted in generations. Besides, the cybercosm had first proposed the scheme. Surely sophotectic intelligence superior to the human knew what was best for humanity.
Lilisaire’s voice plucked him from his recollections. “Indeed. We waxed sufficiently troublesome that the government investigated us.”
“Well, naturally, if you were making a fuss, a data scan—”
“Nay, more. Officers from Earth prowled about inquiring. One of them came hither soon after I had called to you. Nor was he an ordinary Peace Authority agent. He was of the best they have, a very syn-noiont.”
Startled, Kenmuir exclaimed, “That was serious!”
She finger-shrugged. “Ey, he said not his nature to me. But I scented he was no common man. Later I carried a hunt of my own through the databases and among folk. Have no fear. It is unlikely he knows I did. And he found naught of wrongdoing.” Her laughter chimed. “For, I regret, there has been none. Whence might the opportunity for it have come?”
Abrupt, cold fury spat: “Nay, we lie bound, awaiting the knife. It will not even slit our throats cleanly. First the women shall be spayed and the men gelded.”
The leopard snarled.
Kenmuir fumbled for words. “Matters can’t be that bad, my lady.”
She put on calm. “Think. What has preserved us thus far, save that Terrans cannot breed on the Moon?”
His mind tried to resist her. What was preserved, it said, was the dominance of the Selenarchy, in fact if no longer in name. And that began to be eroded after biotech enabled his kind to live indefinitely under low gravity, healthy except for loss of muscle tissue if they didn’t keep up their exercises. (For a second he imagined he could feel the engineered microbes implanted in him, their chemistry suffusing every cell.) More and more of the old species took up permanent residence. But, yes, their numbers remained limited by the inability of their women to carry a child to term, or raise one born on a larger world but less than about three years of age, nervous system still developing. However precariously, the Lunar aristocrats clung to dominion over the nominal republic.
“Now you expect a rush of settlers from Earth?” he asked stupidly.
“It will be unstoppable. The sociotechnic equations foretell it. Hundreds of thousands declare themselves ardent to go. Once the Habitat is ready—”
Abandoned L-5 refurbished, brought into low Lunar orbit, provided with lightsails to exert the forces that would keep it on that otherwise unstable path, set spinning again in order to give full Earth weight around its huge circumference. Lo, a place for Terrans to bear young and see them through those early years, while easily going to the Moon and back—